Children face crucial choice

My first inclination the day after the presidential election was to be angry and, in dramatic fashion, swear to leave the United States on the next flight anywhere. Instead, I thought of my children, and I had less fear in my heart and more resolve.

I have reared my children to be responsible, courteous and kind; to work hard; to celebrate success; and to give when they can to those in need. They face a society that celebrates mediocrity; gives awards to everyone who shows up for the race; and shirks responsibility.

The Clinton administration may have tainted the country’s sexual values, but the Obama administration has elevated denial of responsibility to a new level. Blame the last administration. Blame the rich. Punish the successful. Blame the job-makers. Blame the energy creators. Celebrate the takers.

By the next presidential election, my son will be of age to vote. He will be a high-school graduate, a college student and will have had a job or two. He will have paid taxes, purchased gasoline for a car and paid utilities. He will have felt the pinch of seeing a paycheck he worked for whittled down by taxes to pay for entitlements. He will see lower salaries, fewer jobs and higher rates of poverty and depression.

He will have a choice to make. He will have a future wife and children on his mind, and my teaching in his heart. He will not be alone. His friends will have the same choice. That choice will propel them in the course we have strayed so far from – what worked, and what gave birth to this nation.

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If your son is informed enough to have ignored the daily barrage of propaganda spewed forth into his brain, then you are truly an excellent parent. Most teens are at their rebellious stage. If you're telling them NO, and pop culture is telling them OK, well, you know what they tend to believe (the purveyors of crap realize this). Fortunately, if you have a good relationship with your child, they'll realize that pop culture's take on affairs is bogus and destructive.

Wait a minute! Bogus and destructive is a weaselly way to describe the cancer that infects today’s society!

Let me see if I can't set this up properly.

Today's pop culture, combined with an inadequate education system is the single biggest threat to the future well being of our society.

You and your son might as well start packing. Poll after poll show the youngest voters are getting more and more liberal. The cohort in the 18-29 age range favor a woman's right to choose, a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, decriminalization of some drugs, same-sex marriage,
and government-funded social safety nets. The current Tea Party controlled version of the Republican party is headed for permanent marginalization. You, your son, and the rest of you in the "end of our nation as we know it" crowd might as well start looking for a country more hospitable to your values. A country like....well I can't think of one just now, but's that's not my problem!

You know as well as I do that all the right wingers' talk about packing up and leaving is just empty talk, a rhetorical gesture no one takes seriously.
Your question then about "what if we all left" is a meaningless one, just as empty as all that talk about leaving. Besides, if you all did decamp, what would you have left to complain about?

and much of the change is in how much hostility there is in how we view each other. I once was all for a "social safety net" for those who needed a hand to get on their feet. That changed when I realized most of the people getting a hand has no interest at all in getting on their feet, but were becoming incredibly sophisticated in having me pay for everything they wanted for their entire lives. And they are teaching the same lifestyle to their children, now into the 3rd and 4th generations.

People who work don't think kindly of mooches and sponges who are self-indulgent, greedy and lazy. That's just a fact of life.

As for moral responsibility and values in determining how our society relates to each other and the world around us, well, that is probably a lost cause except in small pockets around the nation. Some small towns, faith communities, and groups who intentional shun the influence of today's popular/entertainment/media culture are the last bastions of the values that directed and empowered our founders to gain our nation's independence and establish our fleeting liberties.

Those groups also are probably our last, best hope for keeping our nation going when it implodes under the weight of entitlements which have taken the place of everyone's personal responsibility to take care of our own and to be our brothers' keepers.

If we Americans had done that all along, and required the same of everyone else in the nation instead of saying "let the government do it", we would never having gotten anywhere near the societal and economic mess facing us today. But no, we wanted to throw money at the problem instead of dealing with it ourselves where we live.

We should have remembered that a "safety net" quickly transforms into a net that ensnares. And now millions of perfectly able people live as incompetents and dependents because they have been ensnared.

We don't have to pick up and leave. We are smart enough to do well in any political environment we find ourselves. Those that do well will continue to do well and those that live day to day will continue to do so.
It has been said " if you take all the wealth from the wealthy and give it to the poor, the previously wealthy will have it all back in one year". This is true as rich people keep doing what made them rich and the poor keep doing what made them poor.

When we liberals said we'd leave the country if Bush were elected, we knew we were being merely rhetorical. One of the biggest differences between libs and conservatives is that libs understand and use irony.
In the end, it's the ironists who will survive....

RMSHEFF, is it too much to ask you conservatives to make up your minds?
Leave, don't leave, it makes little difference to me, just do one or the other! Talking about leaving and then staying put is a parody of irony:
simple hypocrisy.

President come and go-liberalism and conservatism waxes and wanes. If you think there is a meaningful trend then you're likely mistaken. It will continue to wax and wane. Remember the Dems suffered defeat after defeat after their long legacy of control-people got sick of them. Now their sick of the GOP. Guess what they'll be sick of Dems again. I don't think conservatives will leave just quit working enough to fall below the tax hike cutoff. And physicians are already retiring early because of Obamacare and small businesses are raisin' hades about it too. Restaurants have small profit margins so any increase burden kills them in particular. All the progressives will gladly give all or most of their income to the govt-because they are patriotic. So progressives will work extra-hard to pay more taxes to redistribute to others who are not willing to work. Progressives and conservatives are so simple binary and silly.

This last election has taught the Reps ...what to do & what not to do.....I see change a-coming....& young folks in the party making the biggest change......waxing & waning is exactly what we will have....meet in the middle won't hurt as much as some think....but pleeeeze give up this notion that slaves & immigrants built this nation ....all by their itty bitty selves....without the great thinkers & money folks ...hell we would be speaking German .....ya gotta have greed to make this country work.....

Actually progressivism is growing right now. My hope is that liberalism will increase and progressivism and conservatism will wane. Liberalism will be a nice middle path to take to smaller transparent govt, free market-capitalism, and complete social liberty. A nice hybrid between the two rabid radical extremes of conservatism and progressivism.

The last time a poll was done asking only questions of liberal versus conservative ideology without labeling either as such; those agreeing with conservative ideology vastly outnumbered liberal ideals. Can’t recall the exact numbers but do remember that when the same poll was given with the ideologies labeled, the spread was a little lower, about 40% Con versus 20% Lib.

If 40% of the electorate self identify as conservative, by definition their views can’t reasonably be labeled as “rabid radical extremes”.

"Day 10 and the sky is still in place, the march of history continues, enjoy the ride."

Sky is still there, and so is the record high unemployment, 2 credit downgrades, GITMO still operating, Patriot act still in place, debt at all time high, companies cutting hours and laying off employees because of ACA........but at least that sky is there.

EEL wrote, "You know as well as I do that all the right wingers' talk about packing up and leaving is just empty talk, a rhetorical gesture no one takes seriously" @ 8:33 and then wrote,
"When we liberals said we'd leave the country if Bush were elected, we knew we were being merely rhetorical" @ 9:10.

Wow! You're a genius. I suppose you'll now write some tortured reply that liberals better understand rhetorical statements/questions just like they "understand and use irony" more than conservatives. Even better, you won't see the irony of your position, which always makes your posts such a hoot to read.

RA.....Day 10, 10:00 AM......the market is already down another 60. 2012 profits are gone.....whether they get a "cliff" deal or not the 2012 profits are gone.......no new tax revenue there. In fact, they will get less.

I see the union managed to close Hostess. That worked out well for them didn't it. Open your wallets taxpayers. You can't get Twinkies but you will be buying the union members steak.

Look for this to happen more often in low profit margin industries with a unionized workforce.

Pal....or may be it will be "when liberals lie, we are just joking....you conservative are just to dim to get it.......I mean for real.....the terrorist attack was about a movie....you didn't know we were just joking?"

I know, Pal, Yesterday someone said that the Commander in chief takes an oath to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. When I asked him to show me where it said that in the presidential oath all I got was crickets and subject changing.

The act of cutting down trees and hammering nails don't alone build a country. It takes much more than physical strength to set up a nation of laws and all that that entails.

Early settlers, and later pilgrims, cut down trees to start a farm, plant crops to feed the family
...Migrants, yes they were. Slaves, nope. Not in the beginning. The settlers did it by pulling up their own boot straps.